song: Fire — Barns Courtney
Pool Of Glistening Water was just a kit, nearly a to-be, when the strange tom arrived.
The tom's name was Fire — nothing more than just that. He was much larger than her (as many of her Tribemates were, even though he wasn't one) with pure white, silky-soft fur and tranquil amber eyes, he stood out among the Tribe cats with his broad and muscular frame. Pool herself was his opposite: she was thin and lithe, built for speeding through the grassy hills, and her pelt was mostly white but with very pale brown Bengal markings on her sides and back, darkening as they reached her paws, face, and tail. Her eyes were blue, and more often than not full of the eagerness she felt to start her training and serve her Tribe.
Fire was a calm cat. Although he got along well with the hill-guards, and often went with them when they left to train, he never snapped or growled or hissed. He spoke in a calm, soothing tone to every cat, whether they were deserving of it or not. Pool's littermate, a far darker Bengal tom named Pine The Color Of Night, once murmured to her that he should be called Fire That Never Rages.
When Pool started her training, she spent more time with Fire. The tom had become a fixture in the Tribe by then, and he seemed to take a liking to Pool once their Healer, Reader of the Tall Grass, assigned her a position as a hill-guard. Pool was the only cat that he taught his own fighting moves to, making her the only cat in the Tribe who know how to fight as both a Tribe cat and as a loner; something that made her feel very special, and whenever Fire took the time to teach her, she gave him her utmost focus.
She was nearly halfway through her training that Fire started sharing stories with her. He told her about huge cliffs that he had perched atop of to watch distant thunderstorms, a Twolegplace — when asked, he said it was a place where creatures with no fur except for a single patch on the top of their heads and only stand on their hindlegs lived — that he'd wandered through, a mountain full of cats where he had never felt more welcome, a lake that held four different Clans of cats who were the most hostile creatures he had ever met (he joked that they fought every moon over something or other, just for the sake of fighting), a cave with paintings on the wall left behind from Twolegs and the group of cats who lived that their ancestors had amazing powers; they'd even showed him a cavern full of stone animals on leather cords that no cat could make.
He told her that he was sorry that all she would only ever know would be the grasslands.
Pool tried to say that she liked it here, it was home and she was happy, but she thought of all his stories and couldn't bring herself to. She loved her mother and Pine and the rest of the hill-guards, she did, but all of a sudden the grasslands and her Tribe seemed small and insignificant compared to the rest of the world. They were a small group of cats among so many others, and based on how Fire told his stories, he would never think of them — or her — again.
Once, when he was in the middle of telling a story about finding a Twolegplace where the kittypets told him stories about how there used to be a mighty forest were four great Clans used to live before the Twolegs decided to expand, she asked if he would ever tell stories about the Tribe of Towering Grass. He thought for a few long moments, each one making her wither in disappointment, before he spoke.
"I won't speak of your territory," he told her, "or how you fight, or the way you catch your prey. But I'll talk about your culture, and about the cats I met here."
Pool relaxed, a tiny smile curling itself onto her face as she nodded her head, and moved to catch up with the rest of the hill-guards.
The next thing he shared with her was how many bad cats there were in the world. He told her about a group of cats he'd met that believed in four different Gods, and that each of those Gods demanded a sacrifice of a kit; how those cats believed that they were saving the world, even the dying kits did. He told her about rogues who enjoyed starting fights and had no qualms killing cats, who did it just because they thought that it was fun. He told her about visiting a part of Twolegplace, not far from the part that was once a forest, where he had heard stories of a bloodthirsty group of rogues and former kittypets that wore the claws and teeth of their fallen victims in their collars. Even the lake Clans that he had met knew of them — they'd said that they were called BloodClan, and a long time ago, the four Clans had fought with them and killed their leader, killing the Clan along with them.
Fire told her that all those bad things made all the good he'd seen not matter, but he was taking care of it, even if it was slow-going. Pool knew that she could trust him — he was a calm and level-headed cat, after all, who was kind to her and shared his stories and fighting moves with her even though he didn't have to — but how could Fire That Never Rages take care of all those evil cats on his own?
She developed a habit of looking at her own shadow when she was alone. It mimicked her every movement — from the flicks of her ears to the twitches of her whiskers to the lashes of her tail, it was all copied to another, darker version of herself on the ground.
When nighttime came, she'd look up at the stars and ask the Tribe of Endless Hunting for guidance, ask if there was anything she could do about all the evils that Fire had told her about.
None ever came.
At least, until Fire asked if she wanted to leave with him. She knew that what he really meant was Would you help me save the rest of the world? but he didn't ask that — he only asked for a friend to travel with, and the friend he wanted was her. And she did want to go with him, she did, but there were cats she cared about in the Tribe, too, so she told him that she'd have to think about it.
When she told her mother, a white she-cat named Moon That Wanes In Sky, she advised her to let him be — Moon had never really liked Fire, and hated the fact that Pool and the tom spent so much time together.
Still, in the end, Pool ignored her mother's advice.
"If you ever decide to come back," Grassreader mewed when she told her, "we will welcome you. You were born here, and you trained with us."
Pool felt like that was meant to be something of a warning, but that couldn't be, could it? She was traveling, and she was excited for it, and she was leaving with a friend. All the same, she dipped her head to her now-former Healer, even though she had no intentions to take her up on her invitation. "Thank you, Grassreader," she meowed, before turning tail and following after Fire as he led the way into the tall grasses.
She saw the ocean for the first time and marveled at the way the waves lapped at the shore, and a beach with pure white sand that was hot on the pads of her paws. She saw a forest full of streams that was constantly throwing mist into the air. She saw an old stone building that a few cats called home, and were kind enough to allow her and Fire to stay with them for a few days.
These were the cats that taught Pool how to hunt.
"But I'm a hill-guard," she tried to argue to cats who didn't understand what that meant to her, "I don't hunt, I fight."
"You were part of a group before, yes?" a tom asked, accent thick. Pool nodded.
"You're only with Fire, now," a she-cat told her. "So you should learn to hunt for yourself, in case he ever can't hunt."
So she learned. It was a slow process, wherein she wondered how the prey-hunters ever learned how to do it at all, but she did learn.
When they left the loners behind, she saw a rogue rip another cat's throat out in cold blood and finally, truly understood what Fire meant when he told her that all the beautiful things they saw didn't matter when cats like that were around.
That was when she killed her first cat, and she didn't regret a thing.
The first large group of cats that they encountered wasn't a Tribe, or a Clan, like from Fire's stories — it was another, larger group of loners. Pool learned that here, there was one leader, and the elders of the group would choose who the next leader would be once that one died. The cats in training were taught by all cats, and their training was a matter that was carefully planned among them. Fire told her to stay with him at all times, and she nodded her head and made sure to follow at his heels wherever he went, like she was his second shadow.
There was one cat that Fire took a particular interest in, just like he had with Pool. His name was Spark, and he had dark brown fur and green eyes — when she'd first seen him, it had been nighttime and he had been lounging under a tree, making his pelt had look black except for where patches of moonlight filtered in through the leaves, and it had reminded her quite a bit of Pine. His personality, though, was the opposite of her brother's. He was loud and headstrong and protective, whereas Pine was quiet and contemplative and caring.
Fire taught him fighting moves that he had learned as he traveled, just like he'd done with Pool, and he gave him advice for how to improve every time he missed a catch while he was hunting (something that he'd been forced to do quite a bit while Pool was learning to hunt herself). Pool once told Spark that if that was what her training was like, she wasn't sure if she would have been able to cope. That earned her a confused look, and a question of what her training was like. Before she could answer, Fire started telling stories of cats who had long names but rarely went by the whole thing, who had one leader that was also their healer, who chose a kit to learn from them and would take on their name once they died and would lead their Tribe after them, who separated cats into hunters and fighters based on their strengths.
Spark looked over his shoulder at Pool, once he was finished. "But you're name's just Pool. That's not very long."
The Bengal she-cat's ears flicked back as she remembered how Fire introduced her to these cats — My name is Fire, and this is my friend, Pool. "That's not my full name," she told him. "It's Pool Of Glistening Water."
Somehow, Spark managed to blink and widen his eyes at the same time. "Oh," he mewed. "So were you a hunter, or a fighter?"
"I was a to-be." At his confused look, she elaborated. "It was what we called cats in training. I was almost done, and was going to be a full hill-guard, before I decided to leave with Fire, instead."
"Hill-guard?"
"The terms for fighters and hunters in our Tribe," Pool couldn't help but to purr the words 'fighters' and 'hunters', "are hill-guards and prey-hunters."
"Then what did you call your leader?"
"Grassreader was our Healer."
Spark blinked and widened his eyes again. "Your leader was called Grassreader?"
Pool nodded. "Her full name is Reader of the Tall Grass."
The three cats grew close. They listened when Fire told his stories, and Pool even told Spark a few of her own when Fire ordered her stay with the tom. He particularly seemed to like the one where she learned to hunt, and she almost regretted telling him — she wasn't sure if he'd ever stop mocking the way she'd exclaimed I wasn't made to hunt! when he started laughing at her. It felt a bit like having a little brother, though she had no plans of telling him that.
Eventually, Fire started telling Spark about the evil cats and bad places. Unlike Pool, this made him angry; his claws tore into the ground and his tail, fluffed up with aggression, lashed behind him, green eyes blazing. When Fire asked him to travel with him and Pool, he didn't hesitate to say yes.
Pool looked at Spark carefully and saw a cat who could start a movement if he wanted, but he didn't — instead, he chose to follow fire. A voice at the back of her mind that sounded an awful lot like Pine whispered Spark That Blows In Wind; blowing along the breeze for now, but once he really put his mind to something on his own, then he'd start a blaze.
The cats gave their goodbye to the group of loners, and went on their way.
Pool and Spark saw a massive Twoleg nest made of stone, overgrown with moss, cold and drafty on the inside and probably older than either of them could even try to imagine. They saw a sea shell half-buried in the sand, and though Pool had seen the ocean and a beach, she hadn't had the chance to see that yet and had no idea how it ended up in the middle of dry land. They even saw the skull of a Twoleg, and all of these things they saw for the first time together. Fire had already seen all of these things, but he told the two that their excitement made him feel like he was seeing them for the first time all over again.
They saw a hill of wooden crosses so tightly packed that they couldn't weave their way through, and they padded through a place full of stones with strange engravings on them — from a distance, the three cats watched as a group of Twolegs wore all black pelts and lowered a large box into the ground, uncaring about the rain wetting them.
"That's weird," Spark commented.
"Twolegs are weird," Fire responded. His tail was curled elegantly around his paws.
"Twolegs?" Spark asked, turning his head to look at the white tom. "Those are No Furs."
Pool hummed, tilting her head. "I think one of them is in the box."
Spark turned his attention back to the Twolegs, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes. "Are they killing it?"
"I don't think so," Fire decided. "I think it's already dead."
"So they're burying it," Pool mewed.
They watched as the larger creatures left, then they padded up to the hole in the ground. Behind a stone, one of the Twolegs watched the three cats as they stared down at the box and sniffed curiously at the dirt before they left.
Finally, the three found a rogue. Her fur was russet, as if the evidence of all the cats Fire was sure she'd killed was right there on her coat. Without so much as blinking, Fire turned to look at Pool.
"Kill her."
"What?" the rogue asked in a hiss, unsheathing her claws. Pool only nodded, stalking forward with the grace of the predator she was. Behind her, she heard Spark try to come with her and help, but Fire kept him back.
"I want you to watch how Pool fights," she heard him meow. "Remember that she was trained only to fight before she left her Tribe."
Pool let the rogue attack first, unsheathed claws and bared fangs quickly coming her way. She dropped to the ground and rolled, quickly getting back to her paws and leaping onto her back, her claws digging into the skin and ripping, exposing blood and muscle. The cat under her screeched, rolling onto her back, but Pool let go just before she could be crushed under her weight and smoothly rolled away once more. With the rogue still on her back, the Bengal she-cat raced forward and dug her teeth into the stranger's throat, biting down hard as if it was a piece of prey she was killing and not another cat.
Needless to say, Spark was impressed with her fighting skills, and begged her to teach him some kind of Tribe fighting move. Every time she refused, shaking her head and telling him that the way he fought was just fine.
The next group of cats they met was in the first Twolegplace that Pool and Spark ever went to — the buildings were large and towered far above even the Twolegs' heads, and they didn't seem to care about a group of cats racing away from them, overwhelmed by all the sights and sounds and smells. Even Fire admitted to never having been in a Twolegplace this large or active before.
They found the group of cats, who called themselves Star Seekers, when they traveled underground. They lived next to a railway, and every other entrance like the one they had entered (the Star Seekers told them that it was called a Subway Station by the Twolegs, and that giant monsters like the ones they saw on the Thunderpaths used to travel on the rails) was busy, but they told them that this one had been abandoned.
The culture here was something that Pool had to get used to. They had named that were two words long, and unlike Tribe names, they didn't shorten them. Like the Tribe, they separated their "hunters" (called Gatherers here, as they brought back whatever they could find that would look somewhat edible) and Fighters, and each of those groups had a leader. Stranger still was that those two leaders had a leader — while there was no retiring, the oldest cat in the Star Seekers would take on a physically easier life as leader, staying in their camp (which they called The Station) for most of the time and rarely ever leaving. There were two Healers, each with their own Trainee, and unlike in the Tribes or Spark's group where every cat helped with training, a cat as assigned a mentor to teach them everything they knew.
Fire set his sights on two Trainees, here. One was a she-cat named Fallen Sky, a bicolor brown tabby-and-white she-cat with golden eyes, who was excitable, happy, and passionate about anything and everything that she did. Her littermate was a brown tabby tom with amber eyes called Crow's Flame, who was quiet and had a gloomy air about him, but he was just as passionate about the things he did as his sister was.
Fire let Pool and Spark socialize on their own here, as long as the two stayed together. The both of them gravitated towards the Fighters, and the pair found themselves telling stories about where they'd come from.
"So Pool isn't your name?" One of them, a she-cat that she thought was named Flaming Heart, asked. With a flick of an ear and a burst of frustration, Pool remembered that she had been introduced as only 'Pool' again.
"Yeah, but it's only part of it," Spark told her.
"My full name is Pool Of Glistening Water." With a purr, she turned to Spark and mewed, "I like to call you Spark That Blows In Wind."
He blinked and widened his eyes. "Really?" Pool nodded. "What do you call Fire?"
"Me and my brother called him Fire That Never Rages."
One of the young Trainees who was listening to her perked his ears. When she thought for a heartbeat, she remembered that his name was Rain Feather. "What's your brother's name?"
"Pine The Color Of Night."
Rain Feather made a habit of following the two outsiders around. When he went out for training, he invited them along to show them how great Twolegplace could be, and they would usually accept. When Rain Feather was practicing fighting moves his mentor had taught him the day before, the two would give him advice, or show him moves from Spark's loner group or from the Tribe. Whenever Pool showed Rain Feather a move she'd learned as a to-be, Spark would pay more attention than Pool thought he ever had in his life, and it always made her whiskers twitch in amusement.
Occasionally, Fire would take Pool and Spark out into Twolegplace by himself. Rain Feather would often ask to come with them, but Fire would shake his head and tell him that he wouldn't take him out of The Station without his mentor's permission. Whenever they did this, Pool and Spark knew that they were on the hunt — not for any type of prey, but for cats. They would always return to The Station on nights like that with bloody claws, a few wounds, and at least one dead cat in their wake, but no cats asked any questions. Getting into fights with other cats was a common occurrence there, and the Healers kindly lent them the herbs needed to heal them. One of the Trainees, a she-cat named Melted Ice, was surprised to learn that Pool and Spark knew nothing about herbs and healing and took it upon herself to teach them the basics.
It was on one of these outings, when Pool was licking at a scratch on her flank and Spark was washing a slash in his ear, that Fire spoke about leaving.
"Fallen Sky is ready to leave, and if she'll leave, then so will Crow's Flame." The tom looked over his shoulder from where he was watching the hustle and bustle of Twolegs at the end of the alley to the two cats behind him. "I believe that Rain Feather may ask to come with us, as well. Tell him we're leaving."
The two dipped their heads to the cat that had become their leader. "Yes, Fire," they meowed.
They told Rain Feather they were leaving once they woke up the next day, as instructed. He thought for a few long heartbeats, before he nodded his head. He didn't say anything, but if Fire thought that he would want to come with them, then Pool was sure that he would. And, sure he enough, when Fallen Sky and Crow's Flame made their announcement that they wanted to leave with the Star Seekers' visitors, Rain Feather joined them.
The leader of the Star Seekers, Hawk Wing, looked not at the Trainees, but at Fire while the young cats spoke. "You did this before," he croaked. "With Pool and Spark."
"Does it matter?" Fire asked. "Three of your cats want to travel with me, and I'm willing to let them."
Hawk Wing's eyes narrowed. Pool didn't like the look in them. "I'm not surprised, with what you did to them." He raised his head higher as he looked at the Trainees. "You're welcome to leave, and when your travels turn sour, you'll be welcomed back."
Fire turned tail and started to leave, his new followers on his tail and Spark close behind, but Pool hesitated. The leader had started to put a bad taste in her mouth, but the Tribe of Towering Grass had raised her with manners, so she dipped her head politely to the old tom. "Thank you for letting us stay as long as we did, Hawk Wing."
He huffed at her. "Your path will go sour," he warned. "When it does, you and Spark may be able to join us, as well."
The old tom's hazel eyes seemed to stare straight through her, like he knew something she didn't, and it made her bristle. For a heartbeat, she was reminded of what he'd told Rain Feather, Fallen Sky, and Crow's Flame — it sounded a lot like what Grassreader had told her, when she'd left with Fire.
She turned tail and left, hurrying to catch up with Fire and the others and leave the uncomfortable feelings Hawk Wing had stirred up in her in The Station.
Coming up with a Tribe name for Rain Feather was easy — she'd spent quite a bit of time with him, after all, and the name Rain That Clings To Feather stuck to him. For Fallen Sky and Crow's Flame, it was harder.
Fallen Sky was easily excitable, and had the energy of far more than one cat: Fallen Sky itself wasn't a name that seemed to fit her. Still, she eventually decided that Light That Falls From Sky fit her. Crow's Flame was a gloomy, dark tom, and while Crow fit him just fine, Flame didn't. Crow That Flies From Flame, though, seemed to fit him quite well, and even though she didn't know them very well, she would never forget the looks on their faces when they saw the stars for the first time.
Another problem occurred with the fact that Fallen Sky was a Gatherer. Fire told Pool to train her to fight, and he told Fallen Sky to teach Crow's Flame and Rain Feather how to hunt. Every day, Pool found some time to pull Fallen Sky aside and teach her a fighting move or two, and through that she learned how important it was that Grassreader got the assignments of hill-guards and prey-hunters right.
For the quick, leaping moves that had taken Pool ages to learn, Fallen Sky easily picked them up — she told her that it was quite a bit like leaping to catch a piece of prey from a distance. For everything else, she was clumsy, unsure of where to place her paws, and weak. But Pool was patient, Fallen Sky was passionate, and it gave the two she-cats more time to learn about each other. Fallen Sky was one of the cats who didn't know about the Tribe or any of the stories Pool had accumulated through her travels, so she shared them with her. When the tabby-and-white she-cat learned Pool's full name, she meowed, "And I thought my name was long!"
Crow's Flame was still a mystery to her, but both Spark and Rain Feather told her that he was creepy.
They saw a beach with black sand, and another that only had sea shells, and tall, towering statues of Twolegs. In a much, much smaller mountain-side Twolegplace than the one that Fallen Sky, Crow's Flame, and Rain Feather were from, they watched and played as millions of colored flower petals fell from the sky, uncaring of the blood that stained Crow's Flame and Rain Feather's claws. Once, they saw a tree that had pink and orange leaves, even though it was the middle of the time of running water.
The next group of cats they met was a Clan, and Fire's followers were once again allowed to socialize on their own while he set his sights on a black-and-gray tabby with blue eyes. Her name was Cloverpaw, and she was a quiet, smart, and introspective she-cat.
They didn't spend as much time here as Fire had spent at the Tribe or that they had spent at Spark's group or the Star Seekers. As it turned out, Cloverpaw wasn't a big fan of the Clans, and she had always wanted to travel — getting to take care of all the bad in the world was just a bonus to her. Pool looked at her she saw a cat that yearned for something more than the place that she had been born into, even if she didn't quite know how to communicate that, and called her Clover That Crosses Large Land.
She looked at the group Fire had gathered, from the cats she knew well like Spark and Rain Feather and Fallen Sky, to the ones she didn't, because Crow's Flame was just hard to know and Cloverpaw had only just joined them, and saw herself as an older sister and a protector of all of them.
They saw a large tree that took the cats seventeen heartbeats to run around, and was so tall that they couldn't see the top of it even when Spark and Cloverpaw tried to climb the trees around it. Fallen Sky, who hadn't climbed a tree in her life, unsheathed her claws, yowling I'm gonna climb it! before Pool sunk her teeth into her scruff to keep her on the ground while Crow's Flame looked disappointed that he couldn't watch his sister fail.
They saw a forest full of dark, leafless trees that let beams of golden sunlight pass through them. During the day, though, the dark trees were contrasted by the bright green grass.
On quite a few nights where they had traveled north, they saw lights in the sky that changed colors and seemingly blowing in the wind. Fire told them that he had seen them before when he was with the cats that believed their ancestors had powers — they told him that the lights were their ancestors dancing. Pool decided that the lights were her favorite thing that she'd seen, and wished that she could stay there forever, but they moved on and she kept them as a treasured memory.
The next group they met, to Pool's delight, was another Tribe. They lived underground, becoming masters of navigating their tunnels. Instead of hill-guards, they had cave-guards, but other than that, it was almost like she was home again.
When they first met the Tribe cats, evident by their names and the way they introduced themselves, Pool nearly jumped out of her fur with excitement. She nudged Spark with her shoulder, and he purred at the look in her eyes. She could see the former Star Seekers and Cloverpaw all whispering among themselves, too, and casting her periodic glances as Fire introduced them. He still introduced her as Pool, though, and she couldn't help herself.
"It's Pool Of Glistening Water," she corrected. Fire turned his head and gave her a look that she couldn't exactly place, but it was too late to take it back now and she was too happy to care about it.
"Pool Of Glistening Water?" a tom that introduced himself as Mountain Looming Over Sea asked. "Isn't that a Tribe name?"
Pool nodded her head. "I'm from the Tribe of Towering Grass," she shared. "It's far away from here — I was a to-be, training to be a hill-guard, but I left to travel with Fire."
"A hard choice, I imagine," a she-cat called Root Buried In Deep Ground commented. "Come with us, I'm sure Tunnelteller would be interested in meeting you."
"Tunnelteller?" Cloverpaw asked as they fell in line behind the Tribe cats, letting them lead the way through the tunnels they knew so well. "That sounds more like a Clan name."
"Pool's Healer was called Grassreader, but her full name was Reader of the Tall Grass," Fire meowed. "It seems that only Healers in the Tribes have names like Clan cats."
"Why's that?" Rain Feather asked, looking at Pool with round eyes.
"Their names describe what they do," she answered. "Grassreader read the grass to look for signs from the Tribe of Endless Hunting, so I guess that Tunnelteller looks at the Tunnels to speak with his ancestors."
"Huh," Fallen Sky mewed. "Sounds weird." Pool flicked her across the nose with the tip of her tail in response, making her whine, and they were silent for the rest of the journey.
Tunnelteller was an old tom. His fur was a blue-gray color, the fur around his muzzle was tinged silver with age, and his eyes were copper. There was another, younger tom at his side, poised to help him should he need for anything. "I heard that we might be getting visitors," he meowed as they approached.
"From who?" Crow's Flame asked.
"The Tribe of Endless Hunting," the younger cat answered. "Their messages are quite clear."
"Who do you think that is?" Cloverpaw asked Pool in a whisper.
Pool tilted her head, thinking, then answered, "Probably Tunnelteller's to-be."
The to-be, a solid gray tom with dark blue eyes, turned his eyes to Pool, and she didn't like the way so many toms seemed to be staring through her, lately. "They also said that a Tribe cat would be with them."
Pool extended one of her front paws and dipped her head — an action that she hadn't done for moons and made her feel like she was back in the grasslands that she thought of so fondly and the cats she missed so much — and introduced herself once more to the toms.
"I am Teller of the Swirling Tunnels, and this," the old tom flicked his tail to the tom at his side, "is my to-be, Dew That Clings To Grass." Dew dipped his head to them, eyes closed.
Fire stepped forward, dipping his head in return. "I'm the leader of these travelers," he told them. "My name is Fire."
Tunnelteller's eyes narrowed slightly, but he hummed a response anyways. "It's a group I would be proud of."
Here, while the others were allowed to be on their own, Pool was told to stay with Fire at all times. He had his sights set on a black tom with green eyes — one that Pool imagined looked a bit like Pine and a lot more like Spark. His name was Fawn Lost In Forest. He was a proud and eager tom, but he often kept to himself. Pool watched as Fire went along with him during his prey-hunter training (and was glad that she hadn't been subjected to that kind of boredom as a to-be, and even as a full-grown cat often found herself having to be jerked awake by some amused prey-hunter that would tease her about cave-guards and their lack of appreciation until her face was warm), as listened as he told stories of his travels. He even put in some stories that the group had — the one where Pool, Spark, and himself were at the burial for the Twoleg, when Fallen Sky had tried to climb the giant tree, when they saw the lights of dancing ancestors, and Pool found herself interjecting her own notes into his stories.
It was when Pool knew that Fire was going to start talking about rogues and evil cats that she was called into Tunnelteller and Dew's den for the first time. When Fire tired to follow, Tunnelteller clarified, "Just Pool." She was surprised that Fire was glaring, and even more surprised that she could feel it trained on the Healer as she padded into the toms' den. She could never imagine glaring at a Healer.
The three cats settled into the den, and Pool looked at the large hole in the ceiling that was letting in light from the outside. It didn't take long for her eyes to adjust, but it was nice to see grass and real sunlight again rather than small glimpses of it through cracks in the tunnel ceilings.
"Your cats have been here for a while," Tunnelteller began. "They already know about Tribe culture from you, so why are you here?"
Pool gave a small shake of her head. "That's something Fire is keeping to himself," she lied. She could only assume that Tunnelteller wouldn't be too thrilled about the fact that Fire was trying to steal one of his cats away, considering the way that the last few leaders had reacted (Cloudstar, the leader of Cloverpaw's Clan, had raged in a way that Pool was sure that she would never forget, only understandable later when the former apprentice told them that she was her aunt as well as leader).
"But Fire trusts you, doesn't he?" Dew asked, tilting his head at her. "You haven't left his side since you got here."
I don't think that's because he trusts me, she thought. I think that's because he thinks I'll leave him if he doesn't keep me close. "Fire keeps a lot of things to himself," she meowed, curling her tail around her paws. "He's a good tom; I think he worries that I might get homesick if I'm around Tribe cats too long."
Tunnelteller hummed. "What have you gotten from traveling with Fire, if you don't mind me asking? He seems to be gaining more than his followers."
"There's a lot of things," Pool meowed, genuine for the first time since she entered the den. "It would take a while for me to tell you."
"We have time," Dew assured.
So she spoke. From beginning to end, she told them about how at first it was just her and Fire. About the beach with pure white sand, her first time seeing the ocean. About the old stone building, the cats who lived there who taught her how to hunt and why she should. About meeting Spark's group and how he joined them. About the castle, the sea shell, the Twoleg skull, the wooden crosses, the funeral. About the massive Twolegplace where the Star Seekers made their home (and explained that that was where Fallen Sky, Crow's Flame, and Rain Feather were from), about the black sand and sea shell beaches. About the colorful petals and the two amazing trees she'd seen and the Clan Cloverpaw was from in between, and the beautiful forest. Finally, she told them about the dancing lights, made sure that put in as much detail into that one as she could, about how cold it was but how she couldn't tear her eyes away from the sky for even a heartbeat and how she would have stayed there forever if she could have, and then she finally told them about how they found the Tribe.
She left out the killing she'd done along the way, but that was important, too — she was helping the world, even if the world didn't know it.
The toms glanced at each other. "That's a lot of things," Dew meowed.
"Was all that worth leaving your home for?" Tunnelteller asked.
Pool froze. She tried to respond with of course it was, but was left with her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. She'd met amazing cats, witnessed strange cultures (she'd even seen a warrior ceremony at Cloverpaw's old Clan), and seen amazing things as she traveled with Fire and the others. Spark, Rain Feather, Falling Sky, Crow's Flame, and Cloverpaw were all her friends — more than that, even.
But was killing cats worth all that?
She quickly and harshly reminded herself that she was cleansing the world — Fire was sure of it, so she was, too. All of them had blood on their paws.
"Y-yes," Pool answered, not able to stop her stutter. "It was."
She rose to her paws, dipping her head to the two and hurrying out of the den without waiting for a dismissal. When she met Fire outside of the den, he asked why she was with them for so long and what they'd been talking about. She told him that they'd asked why she and the others traveled with him, so she told him about all the things she had seen.
"But not about the rogues?" he hissed, eyes blazing. Taken aback and already off-balance from her conversation with the pair of Healers, she nodded her head frantically with her ears pinned against her head and her blue eyes so wide the whites of them were visible. At that, he relaxed and apologized for hissing at her (not that it made her feel any better), before he led her to the den that the Tribe was letting them stay in.
The next morning, Pool woke to the sound of Fallen Sky speaking.
"—And I tried to climb it, but Pool held me back cause I hadn't climbed a tree before, or whatever — oh! And there was also this time where we were in a Twolegplace by a mountain, and it was raining a bunch of different colors of flower petals, and we all started chasing them! That was where we—"
"Don't," Crow's Flame cold and calm voice cut in. "Fire doesn't want us talking about that, remember?"
"Oh, right, sorry," Fallen Sky meowed. Pool got to her paws, yawning, shaking out her fur and padding out of the den. Just outside, she saw Fallen Sky and Crow's Flame were speaking with Dew. She narrowed her eyes at him, her tail lashing from side to side behind her. As if he could feel her stare, Dew's blue eyes raised to meet her own, and he gave the two former Star Seekers a quick goodbye before he padded away. Pool padded towards the two.
"You know, Fallen Sky," she meowed as she approached, "there's supposed to be this little voice in your head that sometimes tells you 'no'. It's called self-preservation instinct, and I don't think you have one."
"What do you mean?" the she-cat asked, blinking up at her innocently.
"Tunnelteller and Dew are looking into us. They called me into their den yesterday to ask what I got from traveling with Fire." She lowered her voice and her head to make sure she wouldn't be overheard. "Whatever you do, don't. Talk. About. The. Rogues."
Fallen Sky gave a firm nod of her head. "Yes, ma'am!"
Crow's Flame hummed a vaguely affirmative sound.
Later that day, Fire told Fawn about BloodClan, while Pool watched as Dew interrogated Rain Feather and Spark. A few days later, when Fire was telling Fawn about the cats who sacrificed kits, Dew started to pad up to them. Pool tapped her tail on Fire's paw, and he moved his attention to the Healer.
The gray tom payed Fire no mind as he asked Pool if he could show her something above ground. Pool glanced at Fire, who murmured to her not to trust him, then she looked back at the Healer and nodded.
The two entered the tunnels, and Pool let Dew guide them through. She'd been in the tunnels enough times, but she still had no idea how to navigate them and find her way through. The Healer to-be lead them up to the surface, and once Pool was up there with him she took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air that was so hard to get in the tunnels. Dew only purred at her, a sound that made her perk her ears — she'd never heard him purr before, or ever seen him smile, now that she thought about it. Not that it was important; she wouldn't be staying, anyways. He turned tail and led her away from the tunnel entrance, but while he easily leapt over a gap where the earth quickly went several feet down that came back up, Pool slipped in.
Dew looked over the edge at her, a smile (Oh, now there's one there, she thought sulkily) on his face as he purred at her. "Are you alright?" he asked.
Pool shot him a look. "Just get me out of here," she growled. It took a few minutes, but they managed to successfully maneuver her out of the gap. She shook out her ruffled fur and raised her head, only to find that Dew was still purring at her. He flicked her shoulder with the tip of his tail — an act that she was surprised that he would even think about doing, as the Dew that she'd been getting to know was uptight and single-minded and not at all playful — and started padding away once more. Pool bounded after him.
He seemed looser above the ground, she noted. More carefree.
Eventually, they arrived at a river. For Pool, this was disappointing. She'd seen plenty of rivers — this one was calm, and even though the sound of the current was relaxing, it wasn't all that memorable. Dew began padding upstream, and she followed after him. Eventually, she saw where he was going.
Stones jutted out from the shallow water, but here the current was so fast that the water was white with foam was it rushed around the rocks. The land was sloping gently downwards, and the way the land was formed made the river into a series of small waterfalls, adding to the water's speed. Dew leapt onto a rock, then another, and another, until he got to one of the largest boulders in the middle of the river. "Come on!" he called. "It's not hard!"
Nervously, Pool bunched her muscles and leapt like she was hunting prey, her paws clinging to the stone under her. Then, she leapt again, and again, and again, until she nearly rammed into Dew. The Healer helped her steady herself, and the two sat and watched the water.
"This is the best place on the territory," Dew meowed. "It is to me, anyways."
"It's somewhere I'll remember," Pool promised. Turning her eyes to the dark green grass that lined the edge of the river, she added, "It's somewhere I'd tell other cats about."
"I'm glad to hear it."
She turned back to the water, and she found herself looking at her shadow again. When was the last time she'd done that? Not since she was a to-be. It mimicked her every movement — from the flicks of her ears to the twitches of her whiskers to the lashes of her tail. Under the dark surface, the water rippled quickly by, and she realized with a start that she'd left so many ghosts behind her; living and dead ones, that they were impossible to count. There were so many cats that she'd met that she hadn't thought about, so many more that she'd killed. Cats were dead now, because of her, and she'd had a reason for killing them, sure, but... was it a good one?
Was it one that Moon or Pine would approve of? Or any of her other former Tribemates, for that matter?
"Can I tell you something?" Dew asked. Pool hummed, nodding her head. "You seem lonely."
Pool thought for a heartbeat. "Maybe I am," she admitted, voice so quiet it was hard to hear over the water. "Maybe all of us — even Fallen Sky are."
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Dew's eyes go soft. It made something in her chest go warm.
She didn't want to deal with so many emotions right now — the harsh feeling of realization, the crushing guilt, the soft warmth, all contrasting in awful ways. She wasn't sure if she ever could, but certainly not now. So she shoved her shoulder against Dew's until he wobbled, watching as he grinned and laughed.
"Hey— I'm gonna fall!" he complained.
"Exactly," she responded, grinning back.
Dew glared at her, though it was tempered by the way the corners of his mouth twitched with a repressed smile. "I'll get you back," he threatened.
"You can try," Pool told him. "I'll win — I'm a hill-guard, Healer."
She gave him one last good shove, and he fell into the river with a splash.
The doubts came, despite her efforts to evade them.
Were she and the others really making the world better? There were so many amazing things that she'd seen, and she'd been told that for every bad cat, they didn't matter. So she killed — the rogues, the cats in Twolegplace that had done things that would make BloodClan disgusted. But does killing a cat make killing right?
But no. Fire was right. He had to be.
The next time that she had doubts, it was when Dew had licked her on the ear, and Cloverpaw and Fallen Sky had jumped on the teasing opportunity. While Pool's ears and face had warmed under her fur and she kept telling them to shut up (something that the younger she-cats dutifully ignored), and Spark and Rain Feather informed her that any cat that was going to be Pool's mate had to have their approval (to which she responded that they weren't going to be mates, they went out together once and he was just being nice, but she was again ignored), Fire looked more angry than she'd ever seen him.
Would he really kill a cat just so I stay loyal to him? Pool wondered.
Yes, he would, a voice inside her head responded. She'd been away from the Tribe of Towering Grass for so long that she'd forgotten the voice sounded like Pine's.
She shoved the thoughts out of her mind.
The last time it happened was when Fire said that they were leaving. He told them that Fawn was ready to join them, and that they would be leaving soon. Pool thought about the tom standing over the body of a familiar calico — the first cat she'd ever killed — with blood on his muzzle and claws, and she didn't like thinking about it.
When Fire told Tunnelteller and Dew that they were leaving, Fawn announced that he was leaving with them. The cave, filled with every member of the Tribe and Fire's group, was silent for long moment after long moment.
"So this is what you do," Tunnelteller meowed, dragging his gaze from the to-be to Fire. "You manipulate cats into joining you."
"Fawn has chosen to join me and my followers," Fire meowed. "It doesn't matter what you think."
"It does," the Healer argued. "You're surrounded by my Tribe, you've eaten our prey, and Fawn is a cat of the Tribe of Hidden Tunnels."
"I'm joining Fire," Fawn insisted.
"Fire made you think you want to join him," Dew meowed. "It happened to them—" he flicked his tail at Fire's followers, "—too."
"Hey, he just told us that he was going to get rid of all the bad in the world!" Fallen Sky defended. Spark raised a paw and cuffed her round the ear. Pool lowered her head to hiss in her ear.
"Remember that talk we had? About the little voice that says 'no'?"
"Yeah," Fallen Sky mewed sadly. "You said I didn't have one."
Dew left Tunnelteller's side and padded up to Fire's followers. "What did he tell all of you?" he asked. "No one will hurt you if you tell us."
"Fire's our leader," Cloverpaw growled — Pool felt a rush of fondness for how loyal she was, and briefly wondered if the Clans raised all their cats to be that way.
"We're helping him take care of all the evil cats in the world," Crow's Flame meowed.
From the other side of the cave, Fire let out a loud growl, his eyes narrowed into slits. With a flash of nostalgia, Pool remembered when Pine first called him Fire That Never Rages.
Oh, Pine, she thought. Look at how wrong we were.
"You can tell me," Dew encouraged. He looked at all six cats in front of him, but his eyes lingered on Pool the longest.
"He said that for every beautiful thing we saw, every bad cat in the world made it worthless." Her voice was quiet as she spoke.
Spark looked at her, hesitated for one long moment, then added, "And that we'd be helping him, if we traveled with him."
"He told us about all the good stuff first," Cloverpaw meowed, her tone somewhat defeated and her eyes on her paws. "I really liked the story with the cave paintings, and the cavern with stone animals on leather cords, and how the cats there believed that their ancestors had powers."
"Then he told us about BloodClan," Fallen Sky sounded more subdued than she'd ever heard her, "and the cats that sacrifices kits to their gods, and how rogues would kill cats just 'cause they could."
"You've killed cats, haven't you?" Tunnelteller asked.
Pool looked away, because how could she meet anyone's eyes (especially Dew's, one part of her was screaming) with that accusation thrown at her, when she was feeling more shame than she'd ever felt in her entire life? The other cats with her didn't utter a word, but their body language was answer enough for the Tribe — she listened as murmurs broke out among them, pointed and accusing, and she hunched in on herself further.
"Escort Fire off of our territory," Tunnelteller ordered. Pool heard more than she saw a group of cave-guards surround the white tom, and he left shooting glares over his shoulder. "You six," he added to the tom's followers, "are welcome to stay."
"But they've killed cats!" a voice yowled.
"And they thought they were doing good, then," Dew meowed back, voice calm and collected. If she wasn't feeling so shameful, Pool thought that she would have been glad he was standing up for them. "And now they feel differently. Come on." The second part was added in a lower voice, only to the group of six, and he led them back to the den that they had shared with Fire. They stopped at the mouth of the den and each of them looked at the Healer to-be for a few heartbeats, before he leaned forward and licked Pool between her ears and bounded back to join Tunnelteller. No cat felt in the mood for teasing her as they went to their nests, pausing first to pull them as far away from Fire's empty one as they could before they fell asleep.
It took time for them to recover.
Fallen Sky told Pool that she wished that she'd never taught her how to fight, but she was never angry with her for it.
Rain Feather thought about The Station, and the tall buildings of Twolegplace that the Star Seekers lived in. He told Pool, Spark, and Cloverpaw that they were called Star Seekers because the cats had lived there before the Twolegplace was there, and they weathered the construction of it, and moved into The Station from an alleyway as soon as it was abandoned. They adjusted to their new lives, but one thing that they would never stop missing was the stars.
Cloverpaw thought about her mentors — she told them that she'd had two. Her first had died from an illness when she was two moons into her training, and the second was the one she'd had when she'd left her Clan, and she admitted to missing the both of them.
Spark thought about how every cat in his group thought about his training, and every cat acknowledged how important it was that every cat in training be taught right.
Pool told them about how once, she'd tried to go hunting with Pine, and she'd caused him to miss every catch he tried to make. He never got mad at her for it, though, even when the older prey-hunters got mad at him for bringing nothing back.
None of them knew what Crow's Flame was thinking.
Pool, though, was thinking about the offer that Grassreader had extended to her when she left the Tribe of Towering Grass. It came to her constantly, haunting her, and she knew that she couldn't take her former Healer up on it: how could she go back now, bloodstained as she was? And even if she did, Cloverpaw and Spark had never been given similar offers. If they couldn't go back to their homes, how could she go back to hers?
But, slowly, they got better.
Dew made a point to spend more time with Pool.
Fallen Sky started joining the prey-hunters on every patrol she could.
Rain Feather and Spark taught the young to-be cave-guards moves that they had learned from when they were part of the loner group and Star Seekers.
Cloverpaw was spending a lot of time with a she-cat prey-hunter, and Crow's Flame found a tom in the cave-guards that he got along with nicely.
Eventually, they came to an agreement to join the Tribe.
When she asked Dew about it, he told her that she had always been a Tribe cat, and she'd been welcome there since the patrol found her.
Pool died old, after Dew (then Tunnelteller), Spark, and Fallen Sky, but before Cloverpaw, Rain Feather, and Crow's Flame.
When she joined the Tribe of Endless Hunting, she was surprised to find that the first face she saw was Pine The Color Of Night's.
rewritten on april 30th, 2020. happy quarantine, baby!